Wednesday, March 30, 2011

“Last week I was stumbling through my garage, searching through old storage bins, when I came across some old beat CDs from my days as a signed Interscope rapper. I was shocked to find that two of them, both given to me in ‘01, had the name Kanye West on them. These two CDs, which I believe are the oldest Kanye beats ever released, now celebrate their 10 year anniversary.

Monday, March 28, 2011

"[FRONTLINE] takes a hard look at the economics of the annual NCAA tournament—a cash cow for amateur athletics that generates enormous dollars for everyone except the players themselves, raising basic questions of fairness that are now leading a handful of influential figures to challenge the way the NCAA operates."

Athletic departments get a generous supply of sponsor's products and apparel. For example, Nike’s allowance to supply Alabama is valued at $2.3 million per year.

Colleges get an average 10-12 percent royalty on sales of co-branded apparel and merchandise and local media and advertising

Perks. Michigan got a $6.5 million signing bonus from Adidas after being lured away in '07 from Nike. Teams and coaches get first class hotels/air travel, expensive club memberships, etc.

Performance bonuses. These can amount to millions a year for tournament wins, championship games, coach-of-the-year titles, etc.

"A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released in 2009 warned that the NCAA was endangering its tax-exempt status as a voluntary educational organization because of the exploding commercialization of NCAA Division I college sports. The CBO estimated that 60 to 80 percent of the money made through NCAA Division I football teams came from just commercial deals and crossed an educational line."

"I want to explore something that really hasn’t been done. I want to do movies that deal with America’s horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they’re genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it’s ashamed of it, and other countries don’t really deal with because they don’t feel they have the right to."

"With the possible exception of the members of OPEC, N.F.L. owners have pretty much the coziest business arrangement imaginable: they’re effectively members of a cartel—able to limit competition, enhance bargaining power, and hold down costs. Instead of competing against each other for TV money, the owners share it, reducing risk and guaranteeing steady revenue regardless of how well they run their teams."

"You might say that that’s capitalism—those who provide the capital for an enterprise deserve to reap the profits. But the N.F.L. isn’t capitalist in any traditional sense. The league is much more like the trusts that dominated American business in the late nineteenth century, before they were outlawed. Its goal is not to embrace competition but to tame it, making the owners’ businesses less risky and more profitable."

"The first time I met Jordan was at St. John's University, where he was giving the keynote address at their graduation one year. We talked briefly, but didn't really chop it up. A couple of months later, in Chicago, I went to his restaurant at his invitation to have dinner with him. I had Ty-Ty and my friend Juan with me and I told Jordan that if I was going to sit and break bread with him, I'd have to be able to ask him anything. I meant anything.

It was so perfect that I had Juan with me because he's a die-hard Knicks fan, and as much as he respected Jordan, he hated the way Jordan personally sat the Knicks down every year in the Eastern Conference play offs. Juan is a real sports fan; he'd be sick for a week, I'm talking depressed - he wouldn't leave the house - after his team lost. That night he had to sit there and dine with his nemesis. Jordan told Juan the story of how he almost came to the Knicks. He said he was a second away from closing the deal, he was packing his bags to come to New York, when Jerry Krauss called and matched the Knicks' offer at the last minute. Juan looked like he was going to cry."